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The Battle for Greyhawk
Battle for Greyhawk The Battle for Greyhawk refers to a siege of a long planned military campaign by the Horned Society. The siege started in 21st December of the year 576 CY, where they took the unsuspecting city by surprise. Old City, the Artisans quarter, the foreigner quarter were taken over by the attackers during that time. Undercity, Clerkberg and River quarters were disputed territory. The High quarter and the Grand Citadel formed the last line of defense against the Horned Society. The Horned Society was forced to retreat when reinforcements from Furyondy showed up unexpectedly early. Portal Network The Horned Society used an ancient elven portal network with the expertise of Estolathel Lothanel to transport forces across the Flanaess to create a military foothold in Greyhawk, one of the most influential areas. The surprise attack launched from the portal inside elven mansion situated near the Ery River. Although little is officially known about the exact nature of the portal there is information that was gathered in the aftermath of the initial assault: *The first elves on Oerth created an extraplanar nexus of portals. The exact purpose of this portal network is to date unknown, allthough it has been theorised that it may have been used to travel among planes during the Age of Darkness and that it could potentially lead to the Feywild. It is known that when the planar nexus was active, the portal could lead to Ernstad (the capital of the faerie kingdom of Celene) *The portal may have been modified by Estolathel because it lead to elemental pocket dimensions, the exact modifications remain unknown to date. *Historians who researched into the matter, discovered in the Greyhawk library tomes, that the portal nexus was shut down, after it was used for nefarious purposes by the elven house Faethana who mated with demons from the Abyss. *Prior to the Attack, Andor Lothanel claimed to be unable due to overwhelming physical pain to approach the mansion. However other characters had little problems approaching it. *Estolathel Lothanel was killed and thus the portal remained active for a few more days, spawning all kinds of elementals from said pocket dimensions. Later investigations revealed the Portal to be inactive. It is currently unknown whether the Horned Society still possesses the ability to use it or not. *To reactivate the portal nexus, whose location remains unknown to this date, a tremendous amount of power as well as high level dimensionalist-arcane knowledge would have been needed. To this date it is unknown how the Horned Society reactivated the Portal Network. *Andor Lothanel vanished after the death of his sister Estolathel. Sources say he travelled to Highfolk to gather information about the planar nexus and dimensional magic. Siege After the initial assault on Greyhawk, the Horned Society hit an unexpected problem. Not only were their Earth Elementals unable to breach the walls of High Quarter, Air elementals were unable to fly into the High Quarter and Water Elementals could not pass through the sewers. A popular theory among scholars is that the city was protected by a powerful spell when Archmage Zagyg ruled the city. Yet any magical detection spell revealed no presence of such a spell. To this date it remains a mystery of what exactly protected the city from falling. However this halted their advancement and the momentary delay was the saving grace for the city to muster their defense. The city`s defenses mostly relied on hit and run tactics and guerrilla warfare, which allowed them to contest the River quarters and parts of Clerkberg. While the Spellcasters of the horned society tried to dispel whatever magic was protecting High Quarters. It is known, that an underground force tried to push through Undercity, however it most likely was dealt with by the infamous Duke below. After several days of siege, support from the Furyondian army was spotted by scouts and the Horned Society unable to fully take the city was forced to retreat. However when the army retreated to the Lothanel mansion, they discovered that Estolathel was slain and the portal was malfunctioning, hindering their retreat. The army fled to the Cairn hills and scattered. The Furyondian Army followed, however out of thousands of possible hideouts in caves, crevasses and valleys it was near impossible to fight a scattering army, without splitting their own forces too much. In this case the Furyondians would have been forced to split their own forces, which would have made them vulnerable to ambushes and guerilla warfare. As the supplies were running low, the Furyondians decided to gave up on the chase and retreated out of the Cairn Hills. They now hold a strong military presence in Greyhawk. Aftermath Reports have been coming in on attacks of the Horned Society on Halfling Villages near the Nyr Dyv, which lead to Halflings, Gnomes and Dwarves fleeing their Towns and Cities. Stonefort, having reinforced walls and an easily defendeable location is experiencing a rapid population increase by refugees. Many of the refugees are farmers/fishers/labourers who now settle near the safety of Greyhawk after having abandoned their homes. Greyhawk itself is going through a rebuilding phase and Lord Mayor Dragan, who previously did not allow refugees in the city sees the opportunity to use the refugees as laborers for the rebuilding effort in exchange for Asylum and a place to stay.